Troy

Council considers revisions to zoning rules

By Terry Oparka
C & G Staff Writer

The City Council will give Troy’s zoning ordinances a tweak or 12 in coming weeks after the Planning Department and Planning Commission recommended some changes.

“We knew, going in, we would need changes,” City Planner Brent Savidant told the Troy City Council at the Feb. 18 meeting. The Planning Commission, Planning Department and Carlisle/Wortman Associates, the city’s planning consultant, recommend 14 minor changes, in effect fixing typos, to the zoning ordinances, and 12 more substantial changes. The council adopted a new set of ordinances in April of 2011.

Savidant said the changes reflect the two primary goals of the city’s master plan: to protect single-family neighborhoods and spur investment and redevelopment.

The proposed amendments would:

• allow parking in front of buildings, except in form-based districts —where the intent is to place buildings close to the street to encourage pedestrian traffic. These districts include Big Beaver, Maple and neighborhood nodes;

• permit vehicle repair facilities, antique and classic vehicle sales, ambulance facilities and vehicle rental businesses to operate in integrated industrial business, or IB, zoning districts by right and by special use within 300 feet from residentially zoned property;

• allow oil change facilities by right rather than by special use in commercial business, general business, IB and planned vehicle use districts;

• reduce the amount of landscaping required in form-based districts from 20 percent to 15 percent;